One of the most talked-about Google AI features from the Pixel 11 launch was Rambler, its highly effective speech-to-text feature. Now Google is spreading the tech that powers it.
On Wednesday, Google introduced Gemini 3.5 Transcribe, which the company describes as its most precise speech-to-text model yet, and capable of converting raw audio into accurate, polished text. Google shared that this is the model that powers Rambler on Android and the Gemini app on macOS, and it invites developers to build similar capabilities with the model.
Moreover, Gemini 3.5 Transcribe is available across two separate APIs: gemini-3.5-transcribe-live, which is focused on continuous bidirectional real-time interactions with sub-second latency and gemini-3.5-transcribe, which is focused on pre-recorded audio processing and transcribes recorded audio, meetings, and call logs with speaker attribution and word-level timestamps
What makes the model and the Rambler experience stand out is how accurately it can capture your ideas, even when they aren't presented linearly. For instance, during a correction, when one says "actually never mind how about…," it should not account for that; same with "umhs" and "ahs." Other features include:
- The model can delegate complex tasks to other Gemini models via function calls
- It recognizes jargon and unique spellings unique to the speaker
- It automatically transcribes over 85 languages
This progress is reflected in benchmarks, with Gemini 3.5 Transcribe outperforming its previous transcription model, Chip 3, by 70% on time to final transcription as measured by the Artificial Analysis benchmarks and on the FLEURS benchmark, which measures multilingual performance.
Anyone can experience the model today on Android via Gboard's new Rambler feature, in the Gemini app on macOS, and coming soon to Chrome. Developers can access it on Google Antigravity in Google AI Studio.
Our Deeper View #
The most interesting part of this experience is that it will enable other developers to create experiences that perform as well as Rambler or even outperform it with post-training. The biggest competitor to Rambler at the moment is Wispr Flow, which has been dominating the market for months by offering the same thing to users across both Apple and Android devices, but it;s not nearly as seamless or integrated on mobile. With developers able to build similar experiences, Wispr Flow is going to face a flurry of competition, which has me wondering whether it will even be able to retain its place in the market. But the Google model is also exciting because, with so many more developers working on the same foundation, it should unlock even more features that make the model stronger. This is something to look forward to because it already works better than everything else other than Wispr Flow. In our recent podcast episode, we said that Rambler is so good that every other smartphone is likely to have a similar feature within the next two years. It feels like Google just made that a lot easier.